Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

Through the scheme to support national organisations, we do support the IMSA in its infrastructure and scaffolding so that it can distribute the funding. I have commitments and responsibilities in terms of the expenditure of money. I have to be sure the money is spent properly and appropriately and so, when we engage in multi-annual funding with any organisation, it is important for us to ensure it gets to the people we want it to get to. The Minister of State and I have spent a huge amount of our time engaging with this funding to ensure it gets to individual sheds across the country. I have confidence we will be able to do that. As recently as last week, there was a meeting with the facilitator around the women's sheds association to put in place a national framework that will allow us to fund directly. We have continued the funding to the men's sheds. We also have similar funding in place for agriculture shows across the country, which we fund through the Irish Shows Association. When we are making the investment, it is far more efficient to make it through a national representative organisation, which, in turn, can distribute it to local groups. The Irish Shows Association is the model I would recommend to any group.

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